Introduction

A cricket team emerged in the settlement during the summer of 1852. It perhaps reflected an embryonic sense of Bournemouth’s cultural identity, but it may have had more to do with the settlement’s commerce.

A curate’s egg of a season

Beginnings

At the end of May 1852 newspapers reported the appearance of a cricket team at Bournemouth. The copy referred to a club of recent formation ready to play for a season. Some planning and preparation perhaps had occurred. Team members played a match, but no details of the opposition have survived. The event drew a crowd and even several neighbouring gentlemen attended. Play lasted until seven o’clock, a slight surprise, given the ‘inexperience of the greater part of its members and the rough state of the temporary ground’. Some of the players still had sufficient energy to engage in polkas, waltzes and country dances before partaking of an ‘excellent dinner’. For most of the summer, the press remained silent about the club. Any evidence of their activity, if any, has not survived. In August, however, this team may have responded to a challenge from Poole.

Poole

Poole Cricket Club appear not to have played their first match until August, their opponents ‘an eleven from the Branksome Club, recently established at Bournemouth’, perhaps the club already mentioned. Each side had two innings, Poole winning. ‘There was some excellent play exhibited on the part of some members of both elevens, but as regards others we would say they appeared to us to be somewhat out of practice.’ By today’s standards, the teams scored few runs. Bournemouth scored 31, followed by Poole’s 56. In their second innings, Bournemouth managed to reach 47, but Poole lost only 4 wickets in gaining the required runs. Poole, it seemed, had a weapon of distinction. ‘The Branksomeites could not get Blanchard’s peculiar twisters away at all.’ Blanchard took 5 wickets in the first innings, 6 in the second. This game took place at Poole’s Hamworthy ground, a follow up promised at Bournemouth.

Poole again

A return match did take place, despite a dramatic episode happening after the inaugural encounter off the ground. The wife of a Poole player, jealous of his time away at the game, stabbed him with a fruit knife. An inch and a half deep, the wound seemed at first dangerous, but the threat ebbed before long. Early in September, the second match took place, the local team winning by 7 runs, making the series even. The brief report – no scorecard – referred to a deciding game arranged back at Poole. No record of its occurrence has emerged so far, however. The efforts required both to play cricket and to run a team, keeping it going over the winter, seem to have proved too much for the Bournemouth team of ‘Branksomeites’. No further evidence about them appeared in the press for the remainder of the settlement’s early period.

Players rather than gentlemen

Poole ‘Players’

During the Victorian period a sharp social line divided cricket: amateurs and professionals. On occasion, teams of each would have matches, tagged ‘Gentlemen versus Players’. Gentlemen had affluent backgrounds, whereas Players came from working families. The former played without compensation, the latter for money. The match scorecard suggests that participants did not belong to the affluent classes. Listing of the Poole team used only surnames, a marker of professional players. Seven of the Bournemouth team had initials appended to their names, but this seemed to help distinguish between four members called Monkhouse and two Furmages. Gentlemen cricketers tended to have their names prefixed with ‘Mr’. A comparison of the Poole team with a near contemporary trade directory (1851) suggests possible identities for more than half its players. Two of the men may have owned ships, but the rest belonged to the lower middle-classes: retailing, building, small manufacturing, a letter carrier.

Bournemouth ‘Players’

Although the Monkhouse family has proved untraceable, plausible identification of others suggests working people played for this team.  The Furmages’ father may have run a hotel in Corfe Mullen, later in Poole. Thomas Furmage perhaps drove a bus there before an early death. His brother, Charles, untraceable before 1871, travelled in wine and spirits, resident in Islington (1871), but living in Bournemouth by 1881. James Bemister, a metal worker (tin and iron) from Christchurch, the family residing in Bournemouth (1851), later emigrated to Canada. Henry Cailes farmed fifteen acres somewhere on West Cliff, his wife a lodging-house keeper. The Aldridge listed may have equated with Henry, host of the London tavern or hotel, sponsor of the first game held at Bournemouth. Henry, once also a farmer, then a brewer and retailer at Bournemouth, may have belonged to a higher social level, for his family included solicitors.

Civic or commercial objectives

A trace of civic consciousness

Reports of hunting and sailing involving people at the settlement had appeared in the press during the early period. Such activities, however, would have appealed more to people at a social level higher than working people: visitors. Analysis of those playing for the cricket team suggests an embryonic civic consciousness. Perhaps for the first time in the early period, a group of residents – working-men – represented ‘Bournemouth’. The beginnings of a collective conscience also appeared in relation to concern about the sanitation. This, though this came from more affluent people who had their attention on labourers’ cottages. A civic consciousness may have flickered into life, embodied in the cricket team, albeit short-lived. On the other hand a different, less idealistic reason may have accounted for its existence: commerce.

Good business

Both affluent people (‘Gentlemen’) and working people (‘Players’) populated Victorian cricket, around the mid-century. The game often involved promoters, betting and catering available at the ground. William Clarke’s All England XI, an itinerant team of professionals, made him good money. Sometimes he acted as the event’s promoter, at other times charging an appearance fee for the team. Bournemouth’s first game included a ‘spacious booth’ and a brass band. Mr Aldridge may have supplied this as well as his excellent evening meal: ‘to whom much credit is due for his exertions in establishing the club’. So long as the weather held on match days, Aldridge should have seen a good return for his organisational time in the form of beer and food sales. The landlord at the Royal Arms would soon see a similar commercial opportunity in helping the Odd Fellows to establish a branch in the settlement.

Takeaway

While the settlement’s first cricket team may have promoted the Bournemouth name, it would also have had a good effect on local business.

References

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